Addressing Farm Stress through Extension Mental Health Literacy Programs

ABSTRACT

Agricultural producers have worse mental health than the general population, and often have limited access to mental health providers. Educational programs can strengthen knowledge of mental health including warning signs of stress and suicide, as well as assist individuals in developing communication skills and help-seeking behaviors. Cooperative Extension, the nation’s academic outreach unit provided by land-grant universities, has a long history of providing agricultural education programs in the United States; this article describes the expansion of such programs to include mental health education for farmers and agricultural stakeholders in Michigan. Evaluation results of two programs developed by Michigan State University Extension demonstrate the programs are effective in improving understanding of agricultural economic trends, impacts of stress on the body, and warning signs of suicide among agricultural producers and stakeholders. Community-based education increases the capacity for mental health literacy programs to reach distressed farmers.

KEYWORDS:

• Cooperative extension
• farmers
• mental health literacy
• mental health
• suicide

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data availability statement:

To protect the privacy and confidentiality of participants, data are not publicly available.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

The authors have no funding sources to disclose.